(A/N) The third exam! Hoo boy this should be fun. As there are only three fights per chapter, I will be doing more dialogue between fights, so there isn't just two straight chapters of fighting like the preliminaries. This Tenten may have a bit more of a proclivity towards pyrotechnics in this universe… A fun image to consider her just getting fed up and using baby explosive tags to shut up Gai and Lee.
"I say give him a good fight then blow him up." Tenten said, grinning.
Fuji grinned back. "Wonderful idea," they agreed. And it was. Toy with him, let him do all the fighting he wants, let him put on a good show, let both of them put on a good show, then mercilessly blow him up. A wonderful time to show off some of the explosive tags he and Tenten had been working on. A win-win situation for everyone that wasn't Kankuro's puppets.
Of course they'd worked on other things, like aim and general melee weapons, but the explosive tags were the most fun.
"First round, Fuji Uzumaki vs Kankuro." The proctor, Genma, if Fuji remembered right, the one with the senbon in his mouth. He'd replaced poor Hayate, who was in the hospital getting his lungs repaired. Or recovering from that. Honestly it was probably less severe then it sounded, what with his prosthetic lungs and all.
They'd stalled enough, so Fuji jumped down into the arena, using a spot of chakra to land easily and safely. Kankuro already had his puppet beside him, although still wrapped in bandages.
"Begin!" The proctor called, shunshining away.
Fuji summoned a kunai to their hand, placing a relatively low powered explosion seal on the handle then chucking it at Kankuro. It'd explode the kunai, but that was alright. He'd been meaning to blow it up anyway.
They exploded it a few feet away from Kankuro, and when the smoke cleared, both the puppet and puppeteer were riddled with shrapnel from the kunai. It didn't seem to bother either, and the puppet was quickly unwrapped and sent after Fuji, who just cackled and raced for the trees.
They disappeared into the trees, dodging the puppet any time it came near and hurling the occasional kunai at it or Kankuro.
They perched on the upper branches of one of the trees, grabbing at two of their weapons seals. Just a moment longer… There!
Fuji leaped up, internally cursing as they felt a slight cut on their ankle, which meant they needed to finish this fast before the poison took effect. Their scrolls opened, and they hurled weapon after weapon at Kankuro and the puppet in turn.
"Eat fire!" Fuji yelled at him, using a sling to throw an oversized dark at the ground in front of Kankuro, then exploding it.
They landed on the ground nearby, rolling up their scrolls calmly as Kankuro wheezed on the ground, probably unconscious.
The proctor leaped down to check. "He's out. Fuji Uzumaki wins."
Fuji waved at Tenten, then stumbled, wincing as the poison started taking effect. Dangit. At least it didn't seem like they'd gotten too much, and Uzumaki were pretty resistant to poison anyway.
They collected their weapons as quickly as they could manage with the poison still taking effect, then stumbled back up to the competitors area.
"He nicked you didn't he," Tamako sighed, ducking under their arm to support them.
"Just a little bit," Fuji reassured her, although their world was spinning a little bit. "I'm fine. Or will be. Soon."
Tenten looked concerned. "Are you sure?"
"Uzumaki have a pretty extensive poison resistance course in the academy," Tamako offered. "Even if it won't always do anything, sometimes it helps our immune systems work a lot faster when there is poison, even if our bodies don't recognize the specific poison."
Fuji attempted nodding at Tamako's explanation, although they couldn't tell if they'd managed it or not. Their vision was also fading in and out weirdly, so they hoped there wouldn't be any signing going on.
'No hard feelings of course,' Sasuke signed at her. 'But I'll win.'
"We'll see about that," Eidoko shot back easily. "I doubt it, but you can try."
"Have fun children!" Shisui shouted at them from the stands. "I can't actually root for either of you cause one of you is my student and the other's my cousin, but know I'm proud of both of you already!"
"Thanks sensei," Eidoko sighed, with the tone that was generally reserved for over enthusiastic parents.
Sasuke snickered quietly and Eidoko shot him a glare.
"Begin!" The proctor called, leaping away.
"Water bullet!" Eidoko shouted as she wove through the hand seals. She spat out bullet after bullet of water, and Sasuke dodged them all, trying to get in close to engage her in hand to hand.
"Waterfall," Eidoko muttered, doing the hand signs then raising a wave of water then slamming it down towards Sasuke.
Instead of crashing down on Sasuke, a good portion of it was evaporated by a massive fireball.
"Oh, is that how it's going to be?" Eidoko said, narrowing her eyes. "There's a lot more where that came from."
Sasuke wriggled his fingers at her, and Eidoko assumed he was vaguely saying the same thing without actually stopping to sign at her. Two could play at this game.
They went back and forth for a while, Eidoko showing off almost every jutsu in her arsenal, and Sasuke mostly dodging or bursting through them with a great fireball.
Eidoko got impatient after a little bit, flooded the field, and disappeared into some mist and knocked Sasuke out, catching him and holding him above the water so he didn't drown because she was nice like that.
"Eidoko wins," The proctor announced.
"Dare you to get him to bash his fingers into your trumpet," Hirata said, smirking. "It'd be hilarious."
"Or you could just, y'know, beat up Neji," Tamako pointed out reasonably.
'No, bash his fingers into the trumpet,' Sasuke signed. 'He deserves it.'
Kamisori snorted. The Hyuuga did seem like a bastard. He'd beaten up the Kiri genin pretty good in the preliminaries, although to be fair, Kiri nin were kinda bastards too, so who knew.
"He is a bastard," Fuji agreed, propping themselves up on the railing. One nick hadn't been enough to get too much poison in their system, but they were pretty out of it. "Where is Umi? And who are we talking about?"
"With the nurses maybe?" Tamako shrugged. "Who knows."
'Well you're right about the bastard part at least,' Sasuke signed. 'We were talking about the seeing clan.'
"We're talking about the Hyuuga brat," Tamako told Fuji helpfully, as he was unsuccessfully trying to concentrate on Sasuke's hands. "Are you sure you don't need a medic-nin?"
"I'm fiiiiine," Fuji slurred slightly, shifting to lean against Kamisori instead.
"Nope, I gotta go down there," Kamisori told them, shoving Fuji off onto Tamako. "Just take him to the nurses Tamako, he'll need to be like, actually conscious for his next fight."
"Good point. I'll be right back," she replied, laughing. "Break a leg!"
"I'll break his," Kamisori muttered.
'Please do,' Sasuke signed at him. 'Maybe it'll humble him.'
"It won't," Tamako called over her shoulder. "But do anyway! It'll be fun! For us, not him."
"Don't break his legs," Tenten sighed, wandering up into their area from a brief run for water for Fuji to try and help flush out the poison. "Lee will get sad at you and you do not need that."
"Fine fine," Kamisori huffed, swinging over the railing and landing cooly in the arena. They pointed at the Hyuuga, summoning their trumpet. "Fight me bastard!"
The Hyuuga looked offended, which meant his face didn't change much. Kamisori found that irrationally amusing. Maybe they could get the Hyuuga's face to change during the fight. That'd be fun.
"Begin!" The proctor called, and Kamisori immediately raised his trumpet and started playing.
The Hyuuga lunged for him, and Kamisori dodged him, starting off with just a basic depth perception altering melody. He tried to keep the effects only on the Hyuuga, trying to let the audience hear the music without the effects happening to them.
Quite determined to keep their previous decision to get the Hyuuga to bash his fingers into the trumpet, he altered the perception of the Hyuuga just enough so he could move slightly, and the Hyuuga thought he was running his fingers into Kamisori's chest to close one of the tenketsu points there.
The Hyuuga did not hit the tenketsu points in Kamisori's chest.
He hit the very hard chakra enforced metal of Kamisori's trumpet.
It was not pleasant. Or at least Kamisori assumed it wasn't, since he immediately reeled back, clutching his hand, and staring horrified at them.
Kamisori dropped the perception alteration and grinned at the Hyuuga, lunging forward and managing to get behind the boy and lock him into a choke hold.
Enough pressure applied, plus his legs to pin down the Hyuuga's arms, and… he wins!
"The winner is Kamisori Uzumaki," the proctor noted, staring down at, then nudging the unconscious Neji Hyuuga with his foot.
(A/N) End of the first half! This should be fun. I would like to know when Shisui ended up the over enthusiastic sports mom please. Probably when he got genin honestly lol. If anyone noticed, I swapped between he/him and they/them pronouns for Kamisori, and that was on purpose. I don't remember if I said this already, but he's demiboy, so he uses both pronouns interchangeably. Also, I thought these two chapters would be shorter than the usual. I was wrong. I should not have thought that and now in my folly I stare at them being exactly as long as usual.